JB,

I'm reading your Doom Patrol series for the first time. I read the first few issues last night and realized that I was seeing yet another great fight scene featuring a large number of characters all fighting at once. In all the scenes of this type that I've encountered in your work over the years, I've never seen an example, in your work, of problems such as the reader getting "lost" in all the chaos, the fight seeming to be too short or dragged out for too long, or all the chaos making it unclear what is happening. You always manage to capture the energy and clamor of battle without ever screwing up so that it's unclear what is happening or who is where in the scene.

I was wondering what points go through your mind when planning and executing a scene like that and what the biggest potential mistakes are that a writer or artist must try to avoid when portraying a big, crowded fight.   

Thanks.

I start by figuring out which character, or characters, will take up the most space, either because they are themselves large, or because they have wings or big capes or something of that nature, and, having placed them in the shot, I then utilize the "negative space" around them, paying attention to the "silhouette" of each character as s/he is added.

I do basically the same thing with background elements. If there is something that needs to be clearly visible, I place that first in the shot and work around it (following the same "rule" as above).

Thanks for the answer, JB.

I can think of numerous times over the years where I've gotten lost in the process of reading a fight scene, to the point where I have to say "What just happened?" or even go back and see if I missed something.

That's never happened in anything you've drawn, so I was pretty sure you had some sort of plan or method that you used on such occasions.  

Ditto, William.  JB has a good philosophy concerning art direction.